The Woman in the Roman Society. Ideal - Law - Practice Unit 2-3: A true Roman woman – 
a true woman? An ideal 
or a revolutionary factor? Lucretia – Virginia – Cornelia – Cleopatra – Messalina – Agrippina – Theodora and Elagabalus. Literary topos and reality

1. A true Roman woman –
a true woman? An ideal
or a revolutionary factor? Lucretia – Virginia –
Cornelia – Cleopatra – Messalina – Agrippina – Theodora and
Elagabalus
. Literary topos and reality

2. Ovid, Fasti, Book II, A.S. Kline
This day they call the Feralia because they bear (ferunt)
Offerings to the dead: the last day to propitiate the shades.
See, an old woman sitting amongst the girls performs the rites
Of Tacita, the Silent (though she herself is not silent),
With three fingers, she sets three lumps of incense
Under the sill, where the little mouse makes its secret path:
Then she fastens enchanted threads together with dark lead,
And turns seven black beans over and over in her mouth,
And bakes the head of a sprat in the fire, mouth sewn up
With pitch, pierced right through with a bronze needle.
She drops wine on it too, and she or her friends
Drink the wine that’s left, though she gets most.
On leaving she says: ‘We have sealed up hostile mouths

3. Ovid, Fasti, Book II, A.S. Kline
And unfriendly tongues’: and the old woman exits drunk.
You’ll ask at once, who is the goddess Muta?:
Hear of what I’ve learned from the old men.
Jupiter, overcome with intense love for Juturna,
Suffered many things a god ought not to bear.
Now she would hide in the woods among the hazels,
Now she would dive into her sister waters.
The god called the nymphs who lived in Latium,
And spoke these words in the midst of their throng:
‘Your sister is an enemy to herself, and shuns a union
With the supreme god that would benefit her.
Take counsel for both: for what would delight me greatly
Would be a great advantage to your sister.
When she flees, stop her by the riverbank,

4. Ovid, Fasti, Book II, A.S. Kline
Lest she plunges her body into the waters.’
He spoke: all the nymphs of the Tiber agreed,
Those too who haunt your spaces, divine Ilia.
There was a naiad, named Lara: but her old name
Was the first syllable twice-repeated, given her
To mark her failing. Almo, the river-god often said:
‘Daughter, hold your tongue,’ but she still did not.
As soon as she reached the pools of her sister Juturna,
She said: ‘Flee these banks’, and spoke Jupiter’s words.

5. Ovid, Fasti, Book II, A.S. Kline
She even went to Juno, and showing pity for married women
Said: ‘Your husband loves the naiad Juturna.’
Jupiter was angered, and tearing that tongue from her mouth
That she had used so immoderately, called Mercury to him:
‘Lead her to the shadows: that place is fitting for the silent.
She shall be a nymph, but of the infernal marshes.’
Jove’s order was obeyed. On the way they reached a grove:
Then it was they say that she pleased the god who led her.
He prepared to force her, with a glance instead of words
She pleaded, trying to speak from her mute lips.
Heavy with child, she bore twins who guard the crossroads,
The Lares, who keep watch forever over the City.

6. Lucretia the Wife

7. Lucretia
While they were drinking at Sextus Tarquinius’ house, where Tarquinius Collatinus, son of
Egerius, was also dining, the conversation happened to turn to their wives. Each one praised his
own, and the discussion heated up. Collatinus said there was no need for all the talk as only a
few hours were needed to prove beyond a doubt that his wife was the most virtuous.
‘We are young and strong. Why don’t we get on our horses and make a surprise visit. Then
we’ll see with our own eyes how our wives behave when we’re not around.’ The wine had got
them fired up.
‘Let’s go!’ they cried and flew off towards Rome, which they reached as twilight was falling.
There they found the daughters-in-law of the king banqueting with their friends. They
continued on to Collatia to check on Lucretia, whom they found, not at dinner like the others,
but in the atrium of the house, with only her maidservants, working at her wool by lamplight.
There was no question who won the contest. She greeted her husband and the Tarquins, and
the victorious husband graciously invited the others to dine. That was when Sextus Tarquinius
became inflamed by lust and became possessed by the idea of raping Lucretia.

8. Lucretia
While they were drinking at Sextus Tarquinius’ house, where Tarquinius Collatinus, son of
Egerius, was also dining, the conversation happened to turn to their wives. Each one praised his
own, and the discussion heated up. Collatinus said there was no need for all the talk as only a
few hours were needed to prove beyond a doubt that his wife was the most virtuous.
‘We are young and strong. Why don’t we get on our horses and make a surprise visit. Then
we’ll see with our own eyes how our wives behave when we’re not around.’ The wine had got
them fired up.
‘Let’s go!’ they cried and flew off towards Rome, which they reached as twilight was falling.
There they found the daughters-in-law of the king banqueting with their friends. They
continued on to Collatia to check on Lucretia, whom they found, not at dinner like the others,
but in the atrium of the house, with only her maidservants, working at her wool by lamplight.
There was no question who won the contest. She greeted her husband and the Tarquins, and
the victorious husband graciously invited the others to dine. That was when Sextus Tarquinius
became inflamed by lust and became possessed by the idea of raping Lucretia.

9. Lucretia
When he was sure everyone in the house was asleep, he went, with his sword drawn, to
Lucretia’s room, where she was asleep. With his left hand he pinned her to the bed and said,
‘Not a sound, Lucretia. It is I, Sextus Tarquinius. I’ve got a sword in my hand. One sound and
you will die.’ The terrified woman, awakened like that, was sure she was going to die. Tarquinius
confessed his love and tried to persuade her with a combination of entreaties and threats. But
when he saw that the fear of death was having no effect, he tried that of dishonour.
He said that next to her dead body he would place the corpse of a slave with his throat cut.
That way it would seem that she had been killed in the act of adultery. With such terror his
lust triumphed over her tenacious chastity, and then he went away, proud of having blotted the
woman’s honour.

10. Lucretia
They found Lucretia weeping in her room. ‘Are you all right?’ asked her husband.
‘No’, she replied, ‘how can anything be all right if a woman has lost her honour? In
your bed, Collatinus, you’ll find the traces of another man. But only the body was
violated, the mind is innocent, as my death shall attest. Promise me that the
adulterer will be punished. He is Sextus Tarquinius. Last night, he came an enemy
masquerading as a guest and by force of arms took his pleasure. But that pleasure,
if you are men, will be death for him as well as for me.’
They all promised and reassured her that she, who had been forced, was not
guilty, but only the author of the crime. ‘You’ll see,’ she said, ‘what punishment he
deserves. As for me, although I absolve myself of guilt, I do not release myself from
paying the penalty. From now on, no woman can use the example of Lucretia to
live unchaste.’ With that she took the dagger she had hidden in her clothes,
plunged in into her heart, and fell forward dead. Her husband and father cried out.

11. Lucretia
They found Lucretia weeping in her room. ‘Are you all right?’ asked her husband.
‘No’, she replied, ‘how can anything be all right if a woman has lost her honour? In
your bed, Collatinus, you’ll find the traces of another man. But only the body was
violated, the mind is innocent, as my death shall attest. Promise me that the
adulterer will be punished. He is Sextus Tarquinius. Last night, he came an enemy
masquerading as a guest and by force of arms took his pleasure. But that pleasure,
if you are men, will be death for him as well as for me.’
They all promised and reassured her that she, who had been forced, was not
guilty, but only the author of the crime. ‘You’ll see,’ she said, ‘what punishment he
deserves. As for me, although I absolve myself of guilt, I do not release myself from
paying the penalty. From now on, no woman can use the example of Lucretia to
live unchaste.’ With that she took the dagger she had hidden in her clothes,
plunged in into her heart, and fell forward dead. Her husband and father cried out.

12. Lucretia

13. Verginia the Virgin

14. Livy, ab urbe condita
Verginius, seeing no prospect of help anywhere, turned to the tribunal. “Pardon me, Appius, I pray you, if
I have spoken disrespectfully to you, pardon a father’s grief. Allow me to question the nurse here, in the
maiden’s presence, as to what are the real facts of the case, that if I have been falsely called her father, I
may leave her with the greater resignation.” Permission being granted, he took the girl and her nurse
aside to the booths near the temple of Venus Cloacina, now known as the “New Booths,” and there,
snatching up a butcher’s knife, he plunged it into her breast, saying, “In this the only way in which I can, I
vindicate, my child, thy freedom.” Then, looking towards the tribunal, “By this blood, Appius, I devote thy
head to the infernal gods.” Alarmed at the outcry which arose at this terrible deed, the decemvir
ordered Verginius to be arrested. Brandishing the knife, he cleared the way before him, until, protected
by a crowd of sympathisers, he reached the city gate. Icilius and Numitorius took up the lifeless body
and showed it to the people; they deplored the villainy of Appius, the ill-starred beauty of the girl, the
terrible compulsion under which the father had acted. The matrons, who followed with angry cries,
asked, “Was this the condition on which they were to rear children, was this the reward of modesty
and purity?” with other manifestations of that womanly grief, which, owing to their keener sensibility, is
more demonstrative, and so expresses itself in more moving and pitiful fashion. The men, and especially
Icilius, talked of nothing but the abolition of the tribunitian power and the right of appeal and loudly
expressed their indignation at the condition of public affairs.

15. Procedure per legis actiones

16. Procedure per legis actiones
• Ritualistic procedure to formally start the litigation

17. Procedure per legis actiones
• Ritualistic procedure to formally start the litigation
• Summons (in ius vocatio)

18. Procedure per legis actiones
• Ritualistic procedure to formally start the litigation
• Summons (in ius vocatio)
• The object of the litigation brought before the magistrate (in iure
phase)

19. Procedure per legis actiones
• Ritualistic procedure to formally start the litigation
• Summons (in ius vocatio)
• The object of the litigation brought before the magistrate (in iure
phase)
• The phase ends with the nomination of a lay judge, who will check the
evidence, hear witnesses and decide the case.

20. Procedure per legis actiones
• Ritualistic procedure to formally start the litigation
• Summons (in ius vocatio)
• The object of the litigation brought before the magistrate (in iure
phase)
• The phase ends with the nomination of a lay judge, who will check the
evidence, hear witnesses and decide the case.
• The contentious object deposited with one of the litigants or the third
part.

21. Cornelia, the Mother

23. Cornelia the Mother
3. Cornelia (Plutarch, Life of Gaius Gracchus 4.3, 19.1-3. G)
4.3. The people of Rome honoured her not less for her children than for her father, and in later
times set up a bronze statue of her with the inscription, ‘Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi’.
19.1-3. Cornelia is said to have borne these and all her misfortunes nobly and magnanimously, and
to have said about the shrines where they were buried that their bodies had received worthy
tombs. She herself spent her days in the area called Misenum, and did not change her customary
way of life. She had many friends and entertained her friends, and there were always Greeks and
learned men in her company, and all the kings exchanged gifts with her. She particularly enjoyed
discussing with visitors and friends the life and habits of her father Scipio Africanus, and she was
most admirable because she did not grieve for her sons and talked to her audience without
weeping about their sufferings and their accomplishments, as if she were telling stories to them
about the ancient heroes of Rome.
Some thought that she had lost her mind because she was old and had suffered so greatly, and that
she had become insensible because of her misfortunes, but these people were themselves
insensible of how much nobility and good birth and education can help people in times of sorrow,
and that for all the attempts of virtue to prevent it, she may be overcome by fortune, but in her
defeat she cannot be deprived of the power of rational endurance.

24. Cornelia the Mother
Cornelia’s advices to her son (Cornelius Nepos fr. 1-2, trans. Marilyn B. Skinner)
1.You will say that it’s fine to take vengeance upon enemies. That seems good and fine to no one more than me, provided that
it’s achieved without harm to the state. But since that cannot be, far better in every way that our enemies not perish and
remain as they are, rather than that the state be destroyed and perish.
2. I would swear a solemn oath that, apart from those who slew Tiberius Gracchus, no enemy has given me as much vexation
and pain as you have in this affair-you who should have assumed the roles of all those children I once had and have seen to it
that I had as little trouble as possible in my old age, and that, whatever things you were up to, you would chiefly want them to
please me, and that you would consider it a crime to take any major step against my will, especially since I have but a brief time
to live. So you can’t be of service for even that short length of time without going against my will and destroying the state?
Where will it finally end? Will our family ever cease being mad? Will there ever be a limit put on it? Will we ever stop taking
and giving offense? Will we ever feel thoroughly ashamed of setting the state in an uproar and confounding it? Well, if that just
can’t be, seek the tribunate when I’m dead; feel free to do what you like when I won’t know about it. When I am dead, you will
perform the last rites and call upon my parental spirit. Won’t you be ashamed at that time to invoke the spirits of those
whom, while alive and present, you left abandoned and deserted? May Jupiter above not allow you to continue on this course
or permit such insanity to visit your mind! But if you continue on, I’m afraid that, thanks to your own fault. you will experience
such pain throughout your entire life that you yourself will not be able to be pleased with yourself at any time.

25. Octavia
Plutarch, Life of Antony, 30
For they hoped that Octavia, who, besides her
great beauty, had intelligence and dignity, when
united to Antony and beloved by him, as such a
woman naturally must be, would restore
harmony and be their complete salvation.
3 Accordingly, when both men were agreed,
they went up to Rome and celebrated
Octavia's marriage, although the law did not
permit a woman to marry before her husband
had been dead ten months. In this case,
however, the senate passed a decree remitting
the restriction in time.

26. But Cleopatra perceived that Octavia was coming into a contest at close quarters
with her, and feared lest, if she added to the dignity of her character and the power
of Caesar her pleasurable society and her assiduous attentions to Antony, she
would become invincible and get complete control over her husband. She therefore
pretended to be passionately in love with Antony herself, and reduced her body by
slender diet; she put on a look of rapture when Antony drew near, and one of
faintness and melancholy when he went away. 4 She would contrive to be often
seen in tears, and then would quickly wipe the tears away and try to hide them, as if
she would not have Antony notice them. And she practised these arts while Antony
was intending to go up from Syria to join the Mede. Her flatterers, too, were
industrious in her behalf, and used to revile Antony as hard-hearted and unfeeling,
and as the destroyer of a mistress who was devoted to him and him alone.

27. Cleopatra - The Evil One?

28. Cleopatra - The Evil One?

29. Cleopatra the Evil One
Plutarch, Life of Mark Antony: 26. Although she had received many letters from Antony and his friends asking
her to come to meet him [in Cilicia], she took his summons so lightly and laughed at it, that she sailed up the
Cydnus river in a barge with a gilded stern, with purple sails outstretched, pulled by silver oars in time to piping
accompanied by fifes and lyres. She herself lay under a gold-embroidered awning, got up like Aphrodite in a
painting, with slaves dressed as Erotes fanning her on either side. Likewise the prettiest slave-women, dressed
like Nereids and Graces, were at the tillers and the ropes. Remarkable perfumes from many censers
surrounded them. People followed after Cleopatra on both sides of the river, and others came downstream
from the city to see the sight. When finally the entire crowd in the marketplace had disappeared, Antony was
left sitting on the tribunal by himself, and word got round that Aphrodite was leading a festival procession to
Dionysus for the benefit of Asia. Antony sent messengers inviting her to dinner. She insisted instead that he
come to her. Because he wished to show his readiness to accept her invitation and his friendship, he obeyed
her summons and came. The preparations she had made for him were indescribable, and he was particularly
struck by the number of lights. Many are said to have been lowered and lit up at the same time, ordered and
arranged in such intricate relationships with one another, and patterns, some in squares, some in circles, so that
it was a sight among the most noteworthy and beautiful

30. Horace: nunc est bibendum
tangible terrors, pursuing closely
by oar her flight from Italy, even as
To drinking now, now all to the nimble foot
that beats the earth, now friends, now at last it’s
the hawk a gentle dove or the hunter, swift
time in chase, a hare across the plains of
to heap the festive couches deep with snow-mantled Thessaly, keen to put chains
Salian feasts for the gods’ enjoyment. around a monster laden with doom: one who,
Before this day, to break out the Caecuban intent to die more nobly, had nothing of
from our ancestral cellars had been a crime, a woman’s fear before the sword nor
while that demented queen was working fled by swift fleet to a secret border,
havoc to Capitol, death to Empire audacious still to gaze on her humbled court
with her polluted mob of retainers whom
disease alone made men-unrestrained in all
with tranquil face, and valiant enough to take
her impotence of fancied power and the scaly asps in hand, that she might
drunk on sweet fortune. But seeing scarcely drink with her body their deadly venom,
a single ship come out of the flames intact ferocious all the more in her studied death;
subdued her rage, and Caesar impelled a mind she was indeed-disdaining to let the fierce
distraught on Mareotic wine to Liburnian ships lead her dethroned to
arrogant triumph--no humble woman.
.

31. Messalina the
Adulteress

32. Messalina
• Suetionius, Divus Claudius 26
• Then he married Valeria Messalina, daughter of his cousin Messala Barbatus.
But when he learned that besides other shameful and wicked deeds she had
actually married Gaius Silius, and that a formal contract had been signed in
the presence of witnesses, he put her to death and declared before the
assembled Praetorian guard that inasmuch as his marriages did not turn out
well, he would remain a widower, and if he did not keep his word, he would
not refuse death at their hands.

33. Agrippina
• Many years before Agrippina had
anticipated this end for herself and had
spurned the thought. For when she
consulted the astrologers about Nero,
they replied that he would be emperor
and kill his mother. “Let him kill her,” she
said, “provided he is emperor”.

36. Theodora The Empress
Procopius, History of Wars
The emperor and his court were deliberating as to whether it would be better for them if they remained or if
they took to flight in the ships. And many opinions were expressed favouring either course. And the Empress
Theodora also spoke to the following effect: "My opinion then is that the present time, above all others, is
inopportune for flight, even though it bring safety. . . . For one who has been an emperor it is unendurable to
be a fugitive. May I never be separated from this purple, and may I not live that day on which those who meet
me shall not address me as mistress. If, now, it is your wish to save yourself, O Emperor, there is no difficulty.
For we have much money, and there is the sea, here the boats. However consider whether it will not come
about after you have been saved that you would gladly exchange that safety for death. For as for myself, I
approve a certain ancient saying that royalty is a good burial-shroud." When the queen had spoken thus, all
were filled with boldness, and, turning their thoughts towards resistance, they began to consider how they
might be able to defend themselves if any hostile force should come against them. . . .All the hopes of the
emperor were centred upon Belisarius and Mundus, of whom the former, Belisarius, had recently returned
from the Persian war bringing with him a following which was both powerful and imposing, and in particular he
had a great number of spearmen and guards who bad received their training in battles and the perils of
warfare. . . .

37. Theodora The Empress
Procopius, Secret History
But as soon as she arrived at the age of youth, and was now ready for the world, her mother put her on the
stage. Forthwith, she became a courtesan, and such as the ancient Greeks used to call a common one, at
that: for she was not a flute or harp player, nor was she even trained to dance, but only gave her youth to
anyone she met, in utter abandonment. Her general favors included, of course, the actors in the theater; and
in their productions she took part in the low comedy scenes. For she was very funny and a good mimic, and
immediately became popular in this art. There was no shame in the girl, and no one ever saw her dismayed:
no role was too scandalous for her to, accept without a blush. (...)On the field of pleasure she was never
defeated. Often she would go picnicking with ten young men or more, in the flower of their strength and
virility, and dallied with them all, the whole night through. When they wearied of the sport, she would
approach their servants, perhaps thirty in number, and fight a duel with each of these; and even thus found no
allayment of her craving. Once, visiting the house of an illustrious gentleman, they say she mounted the
projecting corner of her dining couch, pulled up the front of her dress, without a blush, and thus carelessly
showed her wantonness. And though she flung wide three gates to the ambassadors of Cupid, she lamented
that nature had not similarly unlocked the straits of her bosom, that she might there have contrived a further
welcome to his emissaries.

38. Theodora The Empress
Frequently, she conceived but as she employed every artifice immediately, a miscarriage was straightway effected. Often, even
in the theater, in the sight of all the people, she removed her costume and stood nude in their midst, except for a girdle about
the groin: not that she was abashed at revealing that, too, to the audience, but because there was a law against appearing
altogether naked on the stage, without at least this much of a fig-leaf. Covered thus with a ribbon, she would sink down to the
stage floor and recline on her back. Slaves to whom the duty was entrusted would then scatter grains of barley from above
into the calyx of this passion flower, whence geese, trained for the purpose, would next pick the grains one by one with their
bills and eat. When she rose, it was not with a blush, but she seemed rather to glory in the performance. For she was not only
impudent herself, but endeavored to make everybody else as audacious. Often when she was alone with other actors she
would undress in their midst and arch her back provocatively, advertising like a peacock both to those who had experience of
her and to those who had not yet had that privilege her trained suppleness. ... So perverse was her wantonness that she
should have hid not only the customary part of her person, as other women do, but her face as well. Thus those who were
intimate with her were straightway recognized from that very fact to be perverts, and any more respectable man who chanced
upon her in the Forum avoided her and withdrew in haste, lest the hem of his mantle, touching such a creature, might be
thought to share in her pollution. For to those who saw her, especially at dawn, she was a bird of ill omen. And toward her
fellow actresses she was as savage as a scorpion: for she was very malicious. ... Thus was this woman born and bred, and her
name was a byword beyond that of other common wenches on the tongues of all men. But when she came back to
Constantinople, Justinian fell violently in love with her. At first he kept her only as a mistress, though he raised her to patrician
rank. Through him Theodora was able immediately to acquire an unholy power and exceedingly great riches. she seemed to
him the sweetest thing in the world, and like all lovers, he desired to please his charmer with every possible favor and requite
her with all his wealth. extravagance added fuel to the flames of passion.

39. Elagabalus
He married many women, and had intercourse with
even more without any legal sanction; yet it was not
that he had any need of them himself, but simply that
he wanted to imitate their actions when he should lie
with his lovers and wanted to get accomplices in his
wantonness by associating with them indiscriminately.
2 He used his body both for doing and allowing many
strange things, which no one could endure to tell or
hear of; but his most conspicuous acts, which it would
be impossible to conceal, were the following. He
would go to the taverns by night, wearing a wig, and
there ply the trade of a female huckster.

40. Elagabalus
and then, when Aurelius addressed him with
the usual salutation, "My Lord Emperor, Hail!"
he bent his neck so as to assume a ravishing
feminine pose, and turning his eyes upon him
with a melting gaze, answered without any
hesitation: "Call me not Lord, for I am a Lady."
5 Then Sardanapalus immediately joined him in
the bath, and finding him when stripped to be
equal to his reputation, burned with even
greater lust, reclined on his breast, and took
dinner, like some loved mistress, in his bosom. 6

41. Elagabalus
and then, when Aurelius addressed him with
the usual salutation, "My Lord Emperor, Hail!"
he bent his neck so as to assume a ravishing
feminine pose, and turning his eyes upon him
with a melting gaze, answered without any
hesitation: "Call me not Lord, for I am a Lady."
5 Then Sardanapalus immediately joined him in
the bath, and finding him when stripped to be
equal to his reputation, burned with even
greater lust, reclined on his breast, and took
dinner, like some loved mistress, in his bosom. 6